I mean, one event sets off the next. The future is determined by the past. (the present doesn’t actually exist as a point in time)
that answer your question?
Not really, since 'sets off' is just as vague as 'determines'. I'm asking about the relationship between something happening now, and something happening next.
For example, I'm sure some guy in China died not long ago. Did that act determine when you would read this post? It came before, you know. But not every 'before' act has a hand in determining every 'after' act, right? So there must be some special quality or relationship [i]beyond[/i] just 'before-after' that connects chains of events. I'm asking what that relationship is like.
A new question: What do you mean when you say that the present doesn't exist as a point in time? It certainly seems to.
your not the only one Uccisore. sht happens, and in happening makes other sht happen. a basic theory that’s existed since about the time people started to think. an overly elaborate explanation of causality.
you know, just because it’s Philosophy doesnt mean it has to be complicated.
and another thing:
Ah yes i see what you mean now.
The main chain of events is really a multi chain, me reading this post depends on different factors to a guy dying in china, however on a grander scale the death of the person in china will affect my life in that there is one less person consuming food, oxgen and water so that my future would have been different had he not died when he did. There are closely related events and distantly related events. however all events in our universe have a point in common through their respective chains.
What did i mean by the present not existing well, saying that this is the present moment can only be achieved if you stop time, because oncce the next unit of time has occured the state of the universe is no longer the same as it was in the previous moment so it isn’t the present. In the space of time it takes you to say, just now, several trillion of present moments will have occured making them the past. The present can’t exist unless you stop time, which incidentally is why no object in the universe can have a definite position and a velocity. that help?
Dante, causality is a lot more complicated than you think, if causality is true there can be no free will, so there can be no interfering god, and technically no-one can be held responsible for their actions.
No sh*t happens because the universe will unfold exactly the way it’s meant to, determined by the events that created it. It just won’t unfold the way you want it to.
Conclusive determinism takes our 3d view of the universe and adds an additional dimension.
god theories basically consist of god and human beings.(2D) Science added the events between god and us (3D), now i’ve added another dimension by extending causality beyond god(4D)
causality only proves that no sh*t happens because the future is determined by the actions in the past.
I see. I still think that in course of putting forward a theory on how the universe is, you need to explore the relationship a little more. Why do I say, “I went to McDonalds because I was hungry” and not “I went to McDonalds because a penguin laid an egg in the Antarctic”? If you take a sentence structure “X because Y”, for a given X, not just any old Y will do. Is this just an illusion of perspective, or is there something to it?
You can say the same thing about anything in motion, however. Suppose I am flying through space in a rocket. Doesn't the term 'inside the rocket' represent a particular space, even though the rocket moves through several trillion points in space in the time it takes to think about it? For a determinist, you could say that with the present, the 'space' is an instant, and the walls of the rocket is our perspective. I believe in free will, so I think the present is much more than that.
on point 1, yes and no.
For the immediate future yes it’s not going to affect you goint to macdonalds, however in the distant future that penguin laying an egg will affect your life. At the very least influence the parents and the penguin chick will have consumed a particular amount of resources, which you would also have a share. According to chaos in evolution, perhaps in the distant future had that penguin not hatched, the entire species could have been wiped out, the seal population would fall, etc it could affect the entire ecosystem of the planet, it depends really. As i said each object has it’s own chain of events (list of things it will do in its existance) Most of the time these chains run parallel, like the penguin lays an egg at the same time you are thinking of macdonalds it’s not going to affect you being able to eat at macdonalds.
However at some point these chains are linked. mostly penguins eat fish, fish goes into cattle feeds, less fish would mean less nutrition in the cattle feed, meaning less cattle, meaning, less burgers, meaning no macdonalds!
So at some point the penguin laying an egg could affect your decision to eat at macdonalds. But as i said earlier it depends on the closeness of the links.
The present can’t exist as a moment IN time because time is constantly causing changes. The definition of present is a moment in time in which everything in the universe remains in a stable state i.e. unchanged. But since time is always causing constant change it is impossible for everything in time to remain the same for ANY length of time.
Think of the present as a frame in a movie, the frame isn’t a changing event, it is fixed, it doesn’t exist in time. Inbetween the frames are lengths of time. You have a frame(not existing in time) then a gap of time then another frame then more time.
This is like the present, the present does exist but it can’t exist as a moment in time, the units of time sit inbetween the moments of present. Since time is continuous you have to discard the present moments since the present doesn’t exist for any length of time. that’s at a universal level.
In philosophy where everything works at a human level major changes have to occur before you think the universe has changed, trillions of moments have to pass. (remember there are approximately 7.7exp42 moments per second, research on planck i would reccomend you take a look at)
At a human level, free will and the present do indeed exist, however at a universal level, human beings aren’t collective organisms, they are a collection of millions of individual organisms, each one of them carrying out their own chain of events which are collectively percieved as a single human action, a heartbeat etc.
At a human level, because there is sufficient time to think, a human being can be held responsible for their actions. however at a universal level a human’s actions are not just the results of thoughts in their brains, you have to include events such as their birth. Obviously without their birth they would have never have been able to commit an action of any sort.
At a universal level every chain of events can be traced back to the begining of time/the universe, and indeed before. Like i said in the top posts in order for you to be born your parents had to meet, in order for them to meet their parents had to meet and so on all the way back to the origin of human beings and before.
At a human level, only immediate, closely related events are taken into account with the result that future predictions are highly innaccurate.
ie. If you are going to walk into a shop to buy something, it has to be there for you to walk into it. Say at the same time you were planning on walkinginto the shop a terrorist was planting a bomb. when you arrive where the shop was, it is no longer there.
When working at a human level you only take closely related things into account with the problem that distantly related factors are ignored. When you were planning on going shopping you didn’t take into account, earth mantle movements, magma currents, air mass movement, gravitational flux, terrorist activities involving foreign policy decided on 50 years ago and so on. The way these factors (or chains of events) interact with one another decides the future, if you ignore this your not going to be able to know what’s happening or what will happen with the result that events in the universe appear random.
However at a universal level these chains of events have to be taken into account giving you a far more accurate idea of the future.
on point 2 your position inside the rocket is entirely relative, so you think that you aren’t moving (in relation to the rocket) however both you and the rocket are moving through millions of points in space. (otherwise you would stay exactly at the same point in space and the rocket would zip past you)
It’s called relative motion, einstein did a lot of work in this area.
I think we’re beginning to get somewhere.
If you give me an example of something you strongly believe in as giving you free will, i will try and explain it to you in universal terms.
At a human level, for everyday life, free will can apply, but for working out the meaning of life you have to include everything that life does/ interacts with. These external objects, such as hydrogen atoms don’t have free will so the outcome of a meeting of the two of you, is not determined by your free will, it is determined by the factors that influenced both you and the hydrogen atoms to meet.
Since the factors that govern the existance of both of you occured before your existance, neither of you can be responsible for the meeting and its immediate outcome, therefore human level philosophy can’t be applied here.
The outcome of the meeting is determined by the factors governing the existance and life of both objects, and not either one’s free will. Therefore a philosophy involving both chains of events has to be used here. And this is where conclusive determinism or extended causality/extended chaos theory/physics comes in.
That sounds like a speculation to me. Saying that I'm 'sharing resources' with the penguin is true because of the categories you choose to use for resources: If you group it such that fish in antarctica are a resource that I'm 'sharing' even though I'll never go to antarctica and I hate fish, that seems arbitrary. If there's an alien species many light-years away, is the penguin 'sharing' resources with them too? I think it is just as reasonable, and more practical, to say that the penguin laying an egg won't affect me at all.
What do you mean by 'closeness' of the links? Surely you don't mean spatially, or temporally.
Do you really mean to say that time is a cause, or are you just speaking loosely here?
That sounds much more like the past to me. I’ve never heard the present defined that way. I’d define it as the point in time at which possibilities become actualities or falsehoods.
As to your explanation of time, I kind of agree- except that I don't see the use of refering to time being 'between' the frames. Time is those moments themselves, there is nothing between one moment and the next. One particular frame (or perhaps a few of them) is the present.
I acknowledge that the rocket is moving, of course. My point is that even though the rocket is moving, there is such a thing as ‘the space inside the rocket’, in the same way that there is such a thing as the present.
I can’t tell you what ‘gives me’ free will, if anything does. I can only point to how I know I have it. I know I have it, because I experience making choices. For example, I responded to this thread a couple hours after I noticed your latest reply. I didn’t respond immediately because I decided to play video games instead for a while.
All this seems to me to be re-explaining casuality. something happens because something else happens. that seems to me to be pretty much a duh think for anyone with an IQ over 12.
yes, and no cause causality doesn’t go beyond the beginning of the universe i’m afraid.
Like i said, conclusive determinism takes causality, chaos theory (multiplicational causality), and determinism and extends them beyond the subatomic and the creation of the universe.
the crux of my theory really is the paradox of the flint.
The flint is a tool used by man, the problem is that in current philosophy the flint can have whatever purpose we give it. So that the flint doesn’t have any real meaning at all. Rather like most people’s beliefs on the meaning of life. If they accept there is no free will then somehow their life becomes meaningless.
The point i’m trying to make is that life and all things have a singular purpose in that they carry out a chain of events, regardless of what meaning we try and give them.
Your own beliefs, for example, actually decide what choices you make in life, so even if they can be proved to be inaccurate, the point is that they made you do something and tht is the purpose of all things in the universe, to carry out a chain of events.
Just as your beliefs make you participate in particular events, and make you behave a particular way, so does the events that have occured in your life.
You say that you have free will because you have experienced free choice, my point is that you can’t just as easily have chosen tea as you could coffee because the reasons for choosing one or the other influenced your decision. If these events didn’t exist, you would not be able to make a decision because there would be no deciding factors. you would stand still all day unable to resolve the feedback loop in your brain.
At a human level you can ignore the past events that have influenced your decision making process, thus giving you the illusion that you can do whatever the hell you want to, but at a universal level the past events in your life are an intregal part of your decision making process. Had these events not occured you wouldn’t be making the decisions you are making.
There are 2 ways of looking at every situation so we realise that the universe is a hell of a lot more complicated than we imagined possible.
it’s not just simply a case of saying a person is responsible for an attrocity anymore, because that would involve ignoring the past events that created them. Now you have to look at the events that influenced their decision making process and inevitably it will lead you to events outwith their control, those events are responsible for the attrocity, the person was just an automatic delivery boy therefore absolving them of all responsibility.
What sort of moral dilemas would this create?
The consequences of my discovery will be grave but at least we can finally know the truth about ourselves and our universe. No more of this randomness, it doesn’t make any logical sense whatsoever.
At the subatominc level our laws of physics are proved wrong so we’ll have to re-think them however it makes no sense to say the universe is random, as i pointed out earlier, the motion of the planets is predictable, and the interaction of atoms is predictable, this means that at the subatomic level the behaviour must be governed by something fixed because if it were’nt the errors (or randominity) would be multiplied as we go up the atomic scale. Atomic reactions would not be predictabe, nor would the motion of celestial bodies, the whole universe and everything in it would be completely random.
electrons for an example would have the ability to not give up their charge if they didn’t want to so all of the elctronic devices on our planet wouldn’t work, instead as long as the components are made correctly the electrons will follow a circuit pathway and give up their charge as they go along. They don’t have free will so the behaviour of a device that uses them is predictible.
It’s all about factors (chains of events) if you know all the factors that govern something you can write a law that explains it’s behaviour. If like black holes you don’t know all the factors, then you won’t be able to explain the behaviour of objects, but that doesn’t mean the behaviour is random, it just means the factors responsible are unknown, and it’s therefore up to us to fill in the gaps.
Only complacent scientists who lack suitable intelligence give up and say that the universe, those of us with an iq above 12 know of cause and effect so we know that any theory involving randomness is wrong.
Any better?
Did you ask an electron whether it would like to give up its charge? An electron can’t “want”. By the way, to be picky, electrons don’t give up their charge as they flow in a circuit.
Anyways, your “theory” is basically determinism, which is old hat really.
Can you explain the deterministic processes behind the apparent random quantum fluctuations in the vacuum energy? If not, then you may have to concede that, as far as we know, there could very well be truly random processes existing in the universe. Don’t be too quick to assume you know so much.
what does mat really want to prove
Ok first of all
determinism: no-one has free will because we are all doing what god chose for us. That’s determinism.
I most certainly am NOT saying that this is the case (although it could be there’s no evidence either way)
So no, my theory is not determinism, although it is vaguely similar there are vast differences.
on electrons, i was making a reference to a possible free will occurance, if we have free will everything we interact with must also have it, including electrons. I agree they can’t “want” or “choose”, THAT’S MY POINT! So you tell me, why they can’t choose, if you understand that you’ll understand the my theory. what makes electrons? why do they do what they do? Answer: They are carrying out and are part of a chain of events!
Our celestial object’s trajectories can be calculated yet quantum mechanics says that they can’t.
Random * fixed = fixed does it?
If the celestial object’s paths can be measured and calculated e.g. the motion of the planets, galaxies etc then at a quantum level you still can’t have free will, (otherwise the planets motions would be randm as well)
Since this clearly isn’t the case it’s the random part that must be wrong then.
To clarify this a little more
planet = atoms = sub atomic particles
fixed = fixed = random that’s according to quantum mechanics, since this is clearly and logically impossible then the only conclusion is that present theories of randominity are wrong.
I surmise the following, we can’t see what’s happening at that low atomic scale, therefore the behaviour appears random, yet as we climb up the scale to larger objects the behaviour can be predicted.
This means that theoretically there should be something controling the behaviour of subatomic particles so that the behaviour of atoms and therefore planets, solor systems and galexies can be explained.
When describing the motion of our planet, represent the earth in terms of sub atomic particles. How many objects with “free will” have put our planet on a perfectly explainable and predictable trajectory? something random= something fixed???
I think not.
The universe is a chain of events
the meaning of life (as part of this) is to carry out the events specific to it.
The specifics of quantum mechanics are being worked on as i speak, but i’m optimistic that extensive use of common sense and logic in this field will remove the errors.
Is that what babies do? And yes, I could have just as easily chosen coffee as tea. That's what makes it a choice, and that's the situation I find myself in all the time. I could either eat another piece of candy right now, or I could wait a while. It's a choice I'm conscious of. Now, you're saying that outside factors influence my choices, and certainly that's true- when I choose something, I can give you reasons why if I think about it. But you make a leap to say that those factors make my mind up for me, or result in there not really being a choice at all. In theory, if I had chosen something else, I would have reasons for that choice as well.
Mat
No, thats not determinism. This is determinism, from dictionary.com:
So basically what you are arguing, and I will say again, this is fairly old hat. For a more in-depth discussion on determinism: plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/
Explain to me this. Lets say that quantum “randomness” is not random at all as you claim and is caused by a set of events X. What causes the set of events X? A set of events Y? What causes the set of events Y? What we are looking at here is an infinite regress. The only way out of an infinite regress is a first cause that itself was not caused and just ‘is’. Which do you prefer?
How can you assign any meaning to carrying out events that you are helpless to carry out in any case?
ok, now you’re getting it.
You see, most people attempt to seperate themselves from the universe. they don’t realise that they are an intregal part of it.
When I say there are reasons for you chosing something, i mean that when faced with a choice, your brain will carry out a set of process of all the imformation it recieves. This is percieved by you as a feeling or thought. Indeed when you are making a choice i bet you say 'will i have candy now? and you then wait for that feeling from what you percieve to be your gut that tells you what to do.
When you are thinking, it’s your brain that does the thinking really. That’s why there are reasons for particular choices, your brain analyses them to determine a course of action. You percieve all the millions of neurological impulses and chemical reactions as a single thought or feeling. Giving you the illusion that you have made the decision when your brain actually went through all the processes and arrived at the conclusion. You didn’t really have any part in it at all, infact you never do.
Babies brains aren’t capble of processing or producing complicated strings of impulses and chemical releases so that no choice can be made.
You see how my theory applies. You’ve got to include your childhood in your idea of your present thought processes. you can’t just say i had free will when i grew up, that would be quite random, completely un explainable. however if we analyse the situation as a chain of events we can see how past events were responsible for and contributed to present events. If you declined the candy, were you full up, were you ill? these are questions which relate to events that have already happened and resulted in your current state, and hence your decision as a result of them.
If you had chosen something else…exactly my point there would be different reasons, based on different events in the past.
in a free will reference you can freely start any thought process wherever you like, it may be helpful for reference purposes, but it doesn’t accurately describe what’s happening.
for example, you could discuss how you chose to take a subject in school, without having to also discuss how the subject came into existance, e.g. the big bang or genesis. But you wouldn’t have a highly accurate description, it would do for the purpose you need but it wouldn’t perhaps help you to find out what that decision will mean for your future.
Obviously your future is caused by events in the universe so understanding them will give you an accurate prediction of what your decision will do.
( did you notice i changed frames of reference for the purposes of my example?)
Mat, this is not your theory! It is determinism and the idea has been around for quite some time.
Knowing your future will be caused by events does not mean that you can accurately predict the future. It is practically impossible to predict with certainty the future of a complex, interactive system. Look into chaos theory and non-linear dynamical systems.
Could you please address the infinite regress problem that I outlined in my post above?
NoelyG this is for you.
You are completely missing it.
the infinite regress is the infinite regress. There IS NO WAY OUT OF IT.
Likely the end of the system and the begining are the same point in time and space so technically the loop is infinite. Thankyou.
has determinism been proclaimed as the meaning of life?
NO
why not.
because modern philosophers work in human frames of reference only!
Even the most fundamental philosophies are flawed.
We don’t have free will because our perception of free will is actually our perception of the ongoing chain of events.
When most philosophers try and think of both frames at the same time they can’t because free will and determinism are opposites. they know the universe is a chain of events but they can’t accept it because they believe in free will.
No i’ve not discovered very much. I’ve taken a few theories and combined them resutling in my ability to proclaim the meaning of life.
I think you know exactly what i’m on about but like all other philosophers i don’t think you’re capable of accepting it because you have convinced yourself that your perception i right instead of the actula events that are occurring.
Just face it.
If we are carrying out a chan of events and always have, then that’s all ther is to it. The reason why we are here is to carry out that chain of events, therefore the meaning of life is to carry out those events.
If no-one else will then i will.
yes determinism (minus the religion part) is the basic concept of conclusive determinism. however unlike the idiots that came up with determinism i’ve taken it a hell of a lot further.
if they won’t then i will.
The meaning of life is to carry out a chain of events
derived from the theories of chaos, determinism and causality.
If you don’t believe that i’ve done anything new, then please find me somewhere in determinism where it says the meaning of life is to carry out a chain of events. (in those EXACT words)
you can’t
i discovered the meaning of life by bringing chaos determinism and causality together.
No-where else does it say determinism is the meaning of life, otherwis i’d have never embarked on this quest.
You find me where it says the meaning of life is to carry out a chain of events, in any philosophy doctrine, course, or paper.
I dare you!
(because if it had already done so we’d all be worshiping that author not god!)
noley G
determinism is the basis of it, but determinism has never concluded with the meaning of life is to carry out a chain of events.
that’s my discovery!
have you heard of julian bagini?
he’s an expert on human philosophy.
according to his most recent book entitled "what’s it all about?"philosophy and the meaning of life (2004) he clearly states that if it were possible to properly answer the question, what’s it all about aka what is the meaning of life, in ten minutes, someone would already have publically done so.
so again i tke this opportunity to proclaim my discovery.
Since life is a chain ofe events
the meaning of life is to carry out those events.
I believe you will find that in court a dictionary definition counts for everything. Determinism never made the conclusion that i did, so there!
it may have hinted at it, and technically it is blasphemy so what, i’m preparing to take on the church as we speak. If determinism is right, which my theory of CONCLUSIVE determinism proves, then someone had better be prepared to stay permanently out of government and law, and it’s not going to be me.
why couldn’t you draw the same conclusion i did and publically proclaim the conclusion for yourself? I believe as with aristotle, your personal beliefs in free will got in the way.
good luck naysayer, i concluded that the meaning of life is to carry out a chain of events, and in doing so i discovered the meaning of life. that’s how the courts will see it. Whether the theory i derived it from was mine or not that hardly matters. the discovery that life is a chain of events SO THE MEANING OF LIFE IS TO CARRY OUT THOSE EVENTS, is mine!!!